Review: In the Met’s New ‘Tristan,’ the Musical Values Take the Honors

Stuart Skelton, left, as Tristan and Nina Stemme as Isolde in “Tristan und Isolde” at the Metropolitan Opera.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

The all-consuming, mystifying love story at the core of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” unfolds against a medieval tale of war between Cornwall and Ireland. Many productions employ imagery of sailors, military conquest and retribution but keep the focus on Wagner’s exploration of love, desire and death.

In the Metropolitan Opera’s audacious new production, which opened the season on Monday night, the director Mariusz Trelinski makes the background story of warring nations explicit, sometimes intrusive. During the great orchestra prelude to Act I, video projections (by Bartek Macias) on a scrim depict an enormous nautical compass and a churning, blackish sea. When the scrim lifts, the stage is filled with an eerily realistic, modern-day, three-decker warship (the set designer is Boris Kudlicka). It looks like a gargantuan maritime dollhouse.

Isolde, the Irish princess who is being transported to Cornwall to marry its king, Marke, is confined to what passes for a stateroom, with a dingy couch and makeshift pantry. The ship is being navigated by Tristan, a noble knight and King Marke’s adopted heir, whom we first see standing on the top deck before various electronic panels and equipment, including surveillance video to check on Isolde.

As Mr. Trelinski has explained in interviews, he sees the ship in “Tristan” as both real and metaphorical. Tristan guides the ship, Mr. Trelinski said, to the “edge of night,” to his own and Isolde’s transcendent deaths. As the opera progresses, the staging becomes increasingly metaphorical, confusingly so.

Still, his concept has intriguing elements and is strongly complemented by the compelling, vulnerable performances he draws from a strong cast, especially the astonishing soprano Nina Stemme as Isolde. And on every step of this Wagnerian trip to the edge of night, the way was led by the conductor Simon Rattle, finally back at the Met after his momentous 2010 companydebutin Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.”

Mr. Rattle’s performance of Wagner’s monumental score, some four hours of music, impressively balanced clarity and richness, coolness and intensity, intelligence and impetuosity. The composer’s harmonic language, which ventures into bold, radical chromaticism, came through in rich, full-bodied orchestral sound. Mr. Rattle also brought uncanny transparency to the contrapuntal lines that mingle continuously in the music. Climactic passages crested with sound, and dramatic episodes generated plenty of heat. Still, Mr. Rattle is not one for swelling, emotive passion. Rather, he goes for incisiveness and vehemence.

Last season, Ms. Stemmetriumphedin the title role of Strauss’s “Elektra” when the Met presented Patrice Chéreau’s stunning production. HerIsoldeis just as outstanding. Her voice has enormous carrying power without any forcing. Gleaming, focused top notes slice through the orchestra. As Isolde went through swings of thwarted fury, yearning and despair, Ms. Stemme altered the colorings of her sound, from steely rawness to melting warmth. And it is not often you hear a Wagnerian soprano who takes care to sing with rhythmic fidelity and crisp diction.

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Evgeny Nikitin, left, as Kurwenal and Mr. Skelton as Tristan.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

If Isolde is a summit for select dramatic sopranos, Tristan may be an evenharderassignment for a heldentenor. This production is lucky to haveStuart Skelton, who gives an honorable and courageous performance. His muscular voice may lack some warmth and ping. But he sings with musical integrity and feeling. And he paced himself impressively during the long, arduous scene in Act III when Tristan, mortally wounded and delirious, back at his ancestral home in Brittany, awaits Isolde. Attended by his loyal servant Kurwenal (the solid bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin), Tristan keeps thinking he sees Isolde’s ship on the horizon, only to be shattered with disappointment, until she finally arrives, too late.

Mr. Trelinski surely deserves some credit for the subtle, effective acting of his cast. But the set designs, especially the warship of Act I, sometimes get in the way, as in the riveting scene when Isolde tells Brangäne, her loyal maid (the rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova), the full story of why she dreads marrying King Marke. Isolde pouts on the floor in front of the couch as Brangäne maternally strokes Isolde’s hair. But the intimacy these two artists achieve is undermined because the midtier room they are confined to seems boxy and distant from the audience.

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The staging works better later in this act when Tristan agrees to meet Isolde and make an act of atonement by sharing a drink. Mr. Trelinski delves enticingly into one of the mysteries of the opera: What is this potion they drink? Isolde thinks she hates Tristan, who killed her fiancé in battle, then returned in disguise, whereupon Isolde healed Tristan’s wound through her magical arts, only to learn who he really was. Still, the encounter roused feelings of love between them, feelings they must vanquish.

On the ship, Isolde wants to share a drink of poison that will actually kill them. But Brangäne substitutes a love potion. Does it have any actual effect? One interpretation is that by embracing what they think is death, Tristan and Isolde enter Schopenhauer’s realm of love as an impossible yearning that can only be resolved in death. This actually releases their love. Mr. Trelinski has the two singers react to the drink with shock and panic. What have we done? What have we unleashed?

Act II, when Tristan and Isolde meet furtively at night, takes place here in a kind of lookout post that is part of the metaphoric ship. They descend slowly into a dark room full of what looks like fuel tanks and armaments, a dreary space. At the climax of their passion, they are discovered by the henchmen of King Marke, who come with glaring flashlights and kick Tristan almost unconscious. Then the formidable bass René Pape appears as the king, wearing a handsome white military uniform. Marke is less angry than hurt and confused by Tristan’s betrayal with the woman who is to become queen. Mr. Pape brought opulent sound and affecting dignity to the king’s aching monologue.

Metaphor sometimes becomes symbolism in Mr. Trelinski’s staging, and that’s another thing entirely. In Act III, as Tristan lies wounded on a hospital bed, a little boy, an invented silent character, approaches him curiously. Mr. Trelinski is clearly moved by a theme other directors gloss over: Tristan was an orphan and still longs for his parents. Introducing this little boy is poignant to a degree but begins to seem heavy-handed.

The production ends with a directorial touch that some Wagner fans may hate (perhaps one reason the production team drew scattered boos during final ovations). Before singing the “Liebestod,” the invocation to love-death, Ms. Stemme’s Isolde slashes her wrist with a knife, precipitating her death. But Wagner’s idea was that Isolde sinks into death transfigured, now united with the dead Tristan — the only possible resolution of desire and passion.

Every time I got impatient with this production, aspects of it drew me back in. I wonder, though, if my reaction was mostly due to the fine singing and the great work of Mr. Rattle and the orchestra. When Ms. Stemme’s Isolde, during the “Liebestod,” wonders whether she alone is hearing mysterious shimmering sounds engulfing her, everyone in the house could hear them too, coming from the great Met orchestra.

Taking On ‘Tristan,’ a Role That Demands Much of a Tenor

The Australian tenor Stuart Skelton as Tristan at the Metropolitan Opera.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

A few months after the premiere performances of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, fell ill. As he died, he reportedly began to sing fragments of his character’s prolonged death scene. Wagner, struck with guilt, wrote: “My Tristan! My beloved! I drove you to the abyss.”

It’s unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. “Tristan,”which opensthe Metropolitan Opera’s season on Monday, is fixated on its characters’ transcendence of their own bodies, and to express this, it places almost superhuman demands on its singers — the tenor in particular. The Met removed the opera from its repertory from 1984 to 1999 because, as Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times, “the Flagstads, Nilssons and Melchiors capable of dominating the title roles have gone, and they have left us empty-handed.”

Well, it turns out, not quite empty-handed. On Monday, Tristan will be sung by the Australian tenorStuart Skelton, who tookon the rolefor the first time this year in Germany and London. The critic Fiona Maddocks wrote in The Guardian that Mr. Skelton “brings a skein of bright-dark shades to a role that makes almost impossible demands of stamina and emotional intensity; he met them, impressively.”

Mr. Skelton, 48, has previously appeared at the Met as Siegmund in Wagner’s “Die Walküre” and the Drum Major in Berg’s “Wozzeck” — parts that, like Tristan, are associated with the elusive “heldentenor,” or heroic tenor, voice: singers who are known not for their high notes but rather for sheer volume and power.

Young singers usually build their careers by taking on gradually longer and more demanding roles. But the metallic colors and lower vocal center of gravity of prospective Tristans often make them an awkward fit for traditional young tenor repertory.

“There’s not really a ladder that leads clearly to Tristan,” Brian Zeger, the artistic director of the voice program at the Juilliard School, said in an interview.

While Mr. Skelton sang some French and Italian opera roles earlier in his career, like Don José in “Carmen,” he has found international success somewhat later in life and primarily in Heldentenor roles. He said the low range of Tristan, Siegmund and Parsifal, difficult for many tenors, was the most comfortable part of his voice. But he nevertheless waited for just the right moment — a touringnew productionwith extensive rehearsal time, and an experienced conductor in Simon Rattle — to embark on Tristan.

The part is, by any account, technically difficult: It is extremely long, and the singer must often project over an orchestra going at full throttle. The difficult parts, Mr. Skelton said wryly, are “Acts 1, 2 and 3.” (The opera has three acts.) His strategy is to “obey the instructions that Wagner gives you. Wagner’s scores are really instruction manuals. When Wagner writes pianissimo, he knows that later he’s not going to write that and you’re going to need vocal reserves.”

But he maintains that Wagner’s music is more introspective than its reputation. Unlike Wagner’s swashbuckling Siegfried in the “Ring” cycle, Tristan inhabits a dark opera with only a few characters and comparatively little action. “So you not only need people who can make it through vocally,” Mr. Zeger said, “but you need the artist who has the personality and internal variety to carry an audience for five hours of solos and duets.”

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Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and his wife, Malvina Garrigues, in the title roles of “Tristan und Isolde,” at the opera’s premiere in Munich in 1865.CreditJoseph Albert, via DeAgostini/Getty Images

Despite that daunting length, Mr. Skelton emphasized that audience members don’t have to be intimidated. “One of the things I encourage people who are coming to hear Wagner for the first time is to let it act on you the way that it does,” he said. “Let the experience be the experience. Let it wash over you.”

That advice harks back to an earlier era, when “Tristan” was a popular hit in New York, not a rarity for connoisseurs. From 1895 to 1917, it appeared at the Met every single season.

The Met accordingly needed a lot of Tristans. Back then, the role wasn’t seen as quite the monolith it has become. Of the company’s first tenor in the role, Albert Niemann, a Times critic wrote with a casualness stunning today that Tristan was “for an artist as sincere and experienced as Herr Niemann, relatively easy work.” His successor, Heinrich Vogl, was apparently less impressive. “His acting is generally significant, but he cannot sing,” The Times wrote in 1890.

A few of these early Tristans stood out: Jean de Reszke, in particular, brought an ardent lyricism to the role (though one reader wrote to The Times complaining that de Reszke was not as heroic as Vogl). Beginning in 1929,Lauritz Melchiorvirtually owned Tristan at the Met for decades, singing it 128 times with nearly unfailing power, consistency and musicality.

Every subsequent heldentenor has been compared with Melchior, usually unfavorably: Nostalgia is a familiar mode for opera fans. “We’re much more demanding of singers now than we were then,” said Speight Jenkins, the former general director of the Seattle Opera. “Everyone in opera looks backwards. If you study old recordings, they were often sloppier. We expect more accuracy.”

Melchior also benefited from some advantages unavailable to today’s performers. Current tenors must perform in more complex stagings while singing a score without the substantial cuts taken a hundred years ago. (This fall the Met will take a single cut in the Act 2 love duet and none at all in the other two acts.) Singers face far busier schedules than in the old days, as well as larger theaters: Many modern Tristans have preferred European houses that are normally smaller than the 4,000-seat Met.Jon Vickers, one of the most admired post-Melchior Tristans, waited until he was over 40 to sing Tristan and then did so only sparingly.

More recently, the Met has seen a wide variety of Tristans, including four tenors in March 2008 alone. This was the result of a flurry of unplanned cancellations — singing Tristan while under the weather is not advisable — but for audience members it was a valuable chance to free themselves from the overwhelming weight of greatness. Appreciating the varied interpretations on offer can be more rewarding than waiting for (and, inevitably, complaining about) the next Melchior.

“There have been so many amazing Tristans who bring such different things to the role,” Mr. Skelton said. “It’s a question of trying to make the most of what you bring as a vocal performer.”

Mr. Jenkins, the former Seattle director, has heard Mr. Skelton in the part and especially praised his intelligence in it.

Nina Stemme Takes On Her Biggest Met Opera Assignment Yet

Nina Stemme, the Swedish dramatic soprano, is singing Isolde, perhaps her greatest role, in a new production of “Tristan und Isolde” that will open the new Metropolitan Opera season.CreditSasha Arutyunova for The New York Times

For a certain kind of New Yorker, whoseManhattan-centrismcomes with the expectation that the Big Apple should naturally be a magnet for the best of everything, the long absences of Nina Stemme, the great Swedish dramatic soprano, were somewhat puzzling.

And for those who love the operas of Wagner and Strauss — and who can go for years without hearing good, let alone great, performances of their most difficult roles — they were excruciating.

But the drought is finally over. Ms. Stemme, 53, who has carefully plotted her career at her own pace, has finally returned. Singingthe title rolein aharrowing Patrice Chéreau productionof Strauss’s “Elektra” in the spring, she has already appeared more at the Metropolitan Opera this year than she had previously in her entire career.

Now she is about to take on her biggest Met assignment yet: singing Isolde, perhaps her signature role, in a psychologically dark new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” that willopen the new seasonon Monday, Sept. 26, conducted by Simon Rattle and directed by Mariusz Trelinski.

How does Ms. Stemme, whose rich voice and ability to launch clear, powerful high notes has made her the world’s reigning Isolde, tackle the part, one of the longest and most daunting in opera?Birgit Nilsson, the Swedish soprano who owned Isolde during the second half of the 20th century, and who once helped the young Ms. Stemme, said that her secret was comfortable shoes. Ms. Stemme has her own strategy: a backstage yoga mat.

“It takes every cell of your body,” Ms. Stemme said of singing Isolde, which she will do for the 100th time on Oct. 27 at the Met. So she explained that she does “a little bit of yoga” in her dressing room after the first two acts “to de-stress,” before returning in the third to sing the otherworldly, climactic “Liebestod” that ends the opera nearly five hours after its start.

Before this year, Ms. Stemme’s New York appearances were so few and far between that she had become something of an unattainable cult figure to the city’s operagoers, who needed either recordings or airplane tickets to hear her as she evolved from an essentially lyric soprano into the rare singer to excel in opera’s heaviest, most punishing roles.

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Stuart Skelton as Tristan and Nina Stemme as Isolde in “Tristan und Isolde” at the Metropolitan Opera.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

This was partly because Ms. Stemme concentrated her career in Europe, where she and her husband, the stage designer Bengt Gomer, were raising three children: Even Brünnhildes and Elektras must navigate a work-life balance. Having a family was a priority from the beginning, she said, and it was one of the factors that led her to turn down a contract with the prestigious Vienna State Opera early in her career in favor of one with the smaller Cologne Opera.

“When I turned 50, I thought, my voice might be gone,” recalled Ms. Stemme, a deliberate, thoughtful artist who studied business before deciding to sing. “And what would be the most important thing to look back at? A huge career or a family? That answer was easy.”

But herlong absencealso came about partly because the Met was apparently slow to offer her the right parts early on. After she made her Met debut in 2000 singing Senta in Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer,” her only other engagement with the company before this year came in 2010, when she sang the title role in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.” Since then, she has sung with other American companies, including inSan Francisco,HoustonandWashington.

Ms. Stemme was diplomatic, noting that the more lyric roles she favored early on were easier for the Met to cast. “There were American singers for that here,” she said.

But as her career took off in the heavier Wagner and Strauss repertoire, in which there are never more than a handful of singers capable of doing the roles justice, her absence from New York became conspicuous. The city’s Wagnerites, a passionate, sometimes obsessive lot, began to look on jealously as she sang elsewhere, recalled Nathalie D. Wagner, the president of the Wagner Society of New York.

“Everyone has been saying for years that she should have been engaged much sooner for the big roles at the Met,” she said. The society went en masse to Washington last spring to hear her sing Brünnhilde in the Washington National Opera’s “Ring” cycle and held a reception for her in 2012 when she sang Strauss’s “Salome” in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said that he began actively pursuing Ms. Stemme almost as soon as he arrived at the Met in 2006. “I put on a full-court press trying to persuade her to come back,” he recalled in a telephone interview.

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Nina Stemme as Elektra at the Met in April.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

But with leading stars booked years in advance, finding the right project at the right time proved difficult. Eventually they struck a kind of package deal. Ms. Stemme agreed to star in the high-profile “Elektra” earlier this year, the new “Tristan,” and, as a bonus, a run of performances last winter as Puccini’s Turandot. All three operas were slated for inclusion in the Met’s popular “Live in HD” program, which broadcasts to cinemas around the world.

“This is my main repertoire, and what I can do the best,” Ms. Stemme said.

Even so, Isolde was not a role she initially expected to sing. When she was first offered the chance to perform it at the Glyndebourne Festival in England in 2003, she recalled, “I thought they were joking.”

So she turned to Ms. Nilsson, who had given Ms. Stemme a scholarship earlier in her career. To her surprise, the veteran soprano said she would be happy to work on it with her.

“And I never felt ready,” Ms. Stemme said, a bit ruefully, of passing up that chance at the part, and at studying it with one of its classic exponents. “I think I’m still like that. But nowadays I see that as a good thing. You’re never ready with these gigantic roles.”

Ready or not, she went on to sing Isolde in leading opera houses around the world and to makeseveral recordingsof it, including one opposite the Tristan of Plácido Domingo ona luxuriously cast studio recordingconducted by Antonio Pappano. Her take on the role has grown definitive enough for the Met to decide to open its season with “Tristan” for the first time since 1937 — when it starred another great Scandinavian Isolde, the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, and Lauritz Melchior.

Now that Ms. Stemme has scaled some of opera’s toughest heights, she wants to inhabit them more. “I still have things I want to tell with Brünnhilde, Isolde and Elektra,” she said. But she is also adding parts, singing her first Kundry in Wagner’s “Parsifal” this spring at the Vienna State Opera, and, in a few years, the Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten.”

As for New York, Ms. Stemme said that while she would be busy in Europe for the next couple of seasons, she and Mr. Gelb were discussing future Met projects.